Infraction System Reform

LordS and I were discussing the infraction system, and I kind of came to the conclusion that the "General Misconduct" (aka stupidity) infraction is a bit outmoded. The design hails from a day when our rules weren't very comprehensive, and there was a lot of moderator discretion about unacceptable behavior. With the very careful revision of the rules, they have taken on a more precise nature that would indicate a revision to the system that enforces them.

My reasoning here is that there are two sides to an infraction - one side is to send a message to a user that their behavior is unacceptable; but the other side is to alert fellow moderators who have to deal with repeat offenders. If someone has a "General Misconduct" infraction, it's kind of hard to tell what the exact offense was. Granted, this could be handled by visiting the post that was infracted, but that model could be improved for efficiency. Further, I think it helps if the infractions carry the general message rather than having to rely on "boilerplates", which don't really address my first issue and require some extra work.

This is my preliminary list of infractions, based on the rules topic:

- Junior Modding
- Advertising
- Trolling
- Incomprehensible Post
- Thread Necromancy
- Insulted Other Members
- Illegal Material (ROMs, Pirated Software, etc.)
- Insubordination (this applies to the "don't edit back if a mod edited it" rule, but is probably also useful for people who give retarded replies to infractions)
- Signature Violation
- Forum Specific Rule (this is a blanket infraction for people who violate specific forum rules like the RMT board stuff)
- Lurk More (the "general stupidity" rule)
- Repeated Infraction (a stronger infraction for people who consistently do the same things over and over again)

The advantages of this method, in addition to being more verbose to an observing mod, include more ability to customize the strength of these infractions, which we can discuss once we put together a list.

Also: On that note, I would also like to suggest the possibility of opening up custom infractions to super moderators, within certain limits (i.e. limits to how many points may be given and how long the infraction can stand for), which I think our Super Moderator staff is trustworthy enough to follow.